3.10.2010

It's an inspiring bit of history, and we like being part of a state with an identity like that.

Along the way to the Alamo, we ended up traipsing through the backroads, and meandering through an old cemetery.

We like walking through graveyards, the skeletal outlines of lives long ago, a set of dates held together by a few lines of poetry. It is good to stand at a distance, to see what really matters after time has smoothed away most of the details, while magnifying others, as an ancient winding stream carves out the riverbed.

Remember the Alamo!

It's strange to think that after all these years, it really doesn't matter whether they won or lost, but it matters tremendously that they died and died valiantly.

We remember that they lost the battle, and we remember that their defeat was part of how the revolution was won.

But sooner or later, I'm sure it all would have turned out this way in the end, and it doesn't really matter how we got here.

But it matters that these brave men fought to the death against hopeless odds, and it matters that their comrades let them die alone and unsupported, and waited to bravely fight the battles that were theirs to fight and win.

All these years later, what matters is not how long their lives were, or even whether in the dying they accomplished their goals. What matters is that they chose wisesly, fought bravely, and died well.

The vic'try or defeat is but a tokenof the glory spilled from lives valiantly broken.